Books, authors and all things bookish

'Fox Mole' scores six-figure book deal

May 4, 2012 | 7:59
am

Joe Muto, better known as "The Fox Mole," has landed a six-figure book deal. He will publish the memoir, tentatively titled "An Atheist in the Fox Hole," with Dutton.

Muto rose to fame in April when he began blogging anonymously for the website Gawker from inside the Fox newsroom as the "Fox Mole." Less than two days went by before his superiors had figured out that Muto was behind the Mole, and he was shown the door.

His Mole-dom didn't last long.

Muto's tenure at Fox had been much longer -- eight years. He started out as a production assistant and made his way up to an associate producer position on Bill O'Reilly's show.

Mr. Muto’s book is pitched as a How to Lose Friends and Alienate People-style industry memoir in a Dave Barry/David Sedaris tone. The proposal outlines chapters devoted to the “cheapness and stinginess” of Fox News (“cannot be overstated”), Mr. O’Reilly’s morning ritual (“lots of yelling”) and — “in what’s certain to be the most talked about chapter of the book” — the 2004 sexual harassment suit filed against Mr. O’Reilly.

“I’ll go through the lawsuit line by line, offering my own interpretation and commentary, and will definitively answer the question Did He Do It?,” Mr. Muto wrote.

Things tend to move fast for Muto -- the book deal was announced a day after The Observer posted the story of it being shopped around.